


Pulling An Angel Out Of A Liar

by jugandbettsdetectiveagency



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: 2.05 Coda, Angst, F/M, there appears to be a surplus of sea imagery in this for some reason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-09
Updated: 2017-11-09
Packaged: 2019-01-31 07:28:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12677211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugandbettsdetectiveagency/pseuds/jugandbettsdetectiveagency
Summary: We are dreamers, wishing upon what we were born from. We made plans, kill them ourselves and then we mourn them.





	Pulling An Angel Out Of A Liar

**Author's Note:**

> This song and that episode got me feeling all kinds of ways.

_We are stars fashioned in the flesh and bone,_  
_We are islands – excuses to remain alone,_  
_We are moons – throw ourselves around each other,_  
_We are oceans being controlled by the pull of another_  
_And I just wanna be loved by you._

**We Are Stars – The Pierces**

 

Her lips taste too salty to be entirely familiar. The usual tang of cherry chapstick is worn and faded, almost as if she hasn’t been religiously reapplying it every few minutes because _Elizabeth, there is nothing attractive about chapped lips_. Jughead breathes in deeper, trying to pull in as much of Betty’s fabric softener smell – like warm sheets fresh from the dryer – as she grips his face and kisses him with an urgency he’s only too happy to return. There’s a brief spark in the back of his mind when he feels the rough edges of broken skin against his jawline where she cups his face, but then she’s sighing into his mouth, giving the little hitched gasp that makes him shiver, and all he can do is tighten his grip on the dip of her waist.

“God, I’ve missed you,” he rasps, the words coming straight from his chest, giving his heart a tight squeeze as they depart. “I’ve just been feeling… I don’t know.” He pauses because _what has he been feeling?_

Apprehension, definitely. Exhaustion, without question. Now that he thinks about it he begins to wonder when Betty’s face became a mirror of his own. There are the preliminary purple bags telling of a sleepless night just starting to nestle beneath her green eyes, wide with concern. Jughead swallows bitterly, averting his eyes for as long as they will allow him. He hadn’t meant to keep himself from Betty for so long. _How long had it been?_ Time no longer seemed to be running in a linear course, alternating between hour-long seconds and sprinting minutes, switching with so little warning Jughead sometimes felt as if each tick of the clock was a pull from the undertow.

“Unmoored,” he settles on, realising he still has to give an answer. It’s an achingly familiar feeling and he’s surprised at how apt the word feels once he’s said it out loud.

“Me too,” Betty sighs immediately, and that stab of guilt once again pushes the tip of its blade into the soft flesh of his gut.

Unmovable Betty Cooper, as sure as the sun will rise. _I can fix this, I will fix this._ Jughead can’t help but feel he’s opened her up to an entirely new vocabulary, one in which he plays the captain, pulling up the chains of her rusted anchor. _How long had she been waiting for his call? Pop’s sign, a beacon in the night, calling them both to shore._

“I just wanted to make sure you were still alive,” he jokes around the rapidly growing lump in his throat, watching as she fixes her focus on the table top in the wake of their unified confession. Her gaze snaps up, suspicion tightening the corners.

“What do you mean?” Betty asks bluntly, accusatory. The need to address their increasing time apart pinches at the tip of his tongue, somewhere between pushing it forwards and stomping it back. _No jokes – got it_ , the ever-weary voice at the back of his head supplies as it pulls up an expression of innocent confusion for him to wear as he speaks.

“That exposé that you published about your mom – that article that you wrote,” Jughead probes. He’d wondered why his dad had never said anything to him. There were plenty of trite warnings about mixing with girls from the north side (girls like Betty Cooper; except he knew there was no reason to heed these, because there _was_ no one like Betty Cooper, only the girl herself), but nothing about her mother’s humble beginnings. He supposes it undermined their argument. He also supposed that she was forgotten out of betrayal; the Southside were nothing if not consistent on their stance about family loyalties. It was something that he was becoming sickeningly acquainted with. But, still, Alice Cooper wasn’t exactly staying quiet about her abhorrence of her home turf. Although he supposes loyal ties don’t always work both ways, were hard to break for some, especially after the intimacies of initiation.

“Oh, um…” There’s a misplaced relief in the softening of Betty’s shoulders that doesn’t sit right with him. “That’s a long story, but yeah, pretty intense. What happened to your hand?” She reaches out with a gentle touch to run her finger against the already frayed and dirtying edges of his hasty bandage. Again, time does that thing where it plays its tricks on Jughead, running Betty’s sentences all into one, without saving space for the passing of a second, the inhalation of a breath. It slows down when her fingers lace through his. _Is it selfish to moor your own boat with someone else’s anchor?_

His breezy, dockside tone matches hers when he half-lies, “Oh, I’m dog-sitting. Remember Hot Dog, that mutt?” They both huff out a laugh that sweeps right past the realms of sincerity. “Don’t worry. He’s got his shots.” _No jokes._ Jughead’s skin begins to crawl, his palm dampening where it rests in Betty’s. The weight of her hand starts to become part of the undertow.

A pause stretches on. Jughead watches Betty work the swell of her lower lip with her teeth, the white lines of pressure rising and falling with each uneasy grate. He wonders if she could taste the raw edge of his own lip earlier, the metallic tang of broken skin that still lingers in his mouth even now. It seems to be an ever-present taste these days.

The muted winter light filters through the slats in the blinds and casts an angelic glow around the fly-aways framing Betty’s face. Her ponytail is looser today, resting tiredly against the nape of her neck instead of standing to determined attention. That tug at his heart comes again as he thinks about all the ways he’s seen Betty undone.

She’s been soft and pliant beneath his fingers from that moment he bit the bullet and changed the course of both their lives. Running his fingers through her untied hair feels like Riverdale’s best kept secret, a guilty pleasure that only he gets to indulge in, when the prying eyes and bright lights are shoved aside. The lighthouse brings people into the bay and Betty was his lighthouse. The beacon in the darkness, with the harsh winds of the open and undiscovered sea forcing the golden tendrils around her face, fanning them out like a pattern of constellations that provide the map back home.

“I wish we could just go,” he sighs, because if he doesn’t the longing may just eat a hole through the pit of his stomach. He’s watching her fidgeting hands, flashes of crimson crescents spurring the words to come faster. “Just hop on a motorcycle and just leave Riverdale.” It all sounds so simple when he says it out loud – what he’d never dared hope for. But then his head supplied motorcycle where it would once conjure truck, and his wistful tone speaks to far more than his actual words. Riverdale, the town where pipedreams are made, crushed, and recycled. Jughead continues; the small twitch at the corner of Betty’s mouth is the drop that breaks the dam. “Go somewhere where there’s no Northside, or Southside, or Serpents, or Ghoulies.” Such places must exist. He saw traces of them in the look Betty gave him when he told her he loved her.

“No… crazy moms, no Black Hoods,” Betty adds. She’s smiling now, like she’s telling a joke and she can’t quite make it to the punchline without cracking. Alice Cooper is not someone Jughead makes a habit of thinking about twice, but her mugshot decides to brand itself behind his eyes in that moment. _Was that as far as someone could make it in Riverdale? Not out, but in. Into one side and one side alone, both feet together, chasm crossed, all ties severed._ Jughead thinks about the bitterness that permeates Alice’s every look she sends his way and wonders if that’s what you’re left with when you try and leave your station, still staring down the barrel of your past at every turn.

“Like Romeo and Juliet, but we live happily ever after instead,” Betty speaks again, her murmur punctuated by a quiet sniffle, and Jughead’s chest _aches_. She imagines a fairy tale ending. And just like in Shakespearean tragedies, those don’t come often in Riverdale. _We could just go…_

It’s ludicrous. It’s unimaginable. And yet he’d imagined it, as had she. There’s that voice again, paced out to the measure of a ticking time bomb, whispering _the fool, the fool, the fool_.

A single tear makes its way out of Betty’s eye as she blinks back at him, a flighty danger masquerading as a hope brewing in their depths. Her verdant gaze is like shattered sea glass, cutting into his desperate hands as they grasp at solid land. The wet sand keeps melting away beneath his grip and he tries not to let the realisation float to the surface – she will always be his undoing.

The lone tear fractures into a thousand different colours as that white light of _the_ _great beyond_ out of the window shines through its prism. Each and every one turns dull beneath his gaze, curdling and leaving a sour taste in his drying mouth.

Betty runs a curious hand over the leather of his bike seat when he walks her outside. She keeps sneaking glances at him, waiting for him to say something more. There’s something that reeks of permission in those glances and he has to look away, fiddling with the strap on his helmet where it hangs over the handlebar, fingers twitching in readiness to pull his beanie from his head. He decides to wait until she’s gone.

“Betty,” he whispers, placing his hand over hers on the seat, unwilling to admit that it might be losing its power. He clutches tighter. His other hand slides up to the back of her neck, knuckles brushing the knot in her ponytail as he brings her lips to his again.

Her lips still taste salty, and this time he does lick away the final traces of cherry flavour. It pulls up a memory of a late night at The Blue and Gold, curled up on the faded couch as Jughead whines that he’s hungry. Betty giggles and tucks herself closer, telling him to search this place she’d heard of somewhere – she couldn’t remember – that did the best pie in New York. She’d take him there to try some one day. _Cherry?_ he asks, his lips hovering just over hers as he speaks, her gasp swallowing his words, ducking in to consume his teasing smirk. _Of course._

Jughead presses into her harder, clenches his eyes tighter, repeating to himself that she’s here, she’s here, she’s here…

Betty’s phone buzzes in her pocket and she rears back as if she’s been shocked, delicate panting breaths clouding the air between their faces. She doesn’t reach for the device, but her hand hovers over the outline of it through her jeans – it’s trembling.

“We’ll talk soon, okay, Juggie?” she whispers, but he’s just seen the way hope looks on her face and it’s not what she’s wearing now. He can’t quite decide what this expression is.

“What is it, Betts?” he asks. He can still do that. _Why hasn’t he done that?_ He suspects it has something to do with not wanting to hear the answer.

“Stay safe,” she pleads, reaching up to play with the lapel of his jacket briefly. The worry is rolling off her in waves. Jughead is no longer drowning; he’s heard that drowning is a peaceful death, if only in that last moment when you give in to the burn in your lungs and the water at your lips, seeking home in your body. Your oxygen starved brain sends out one final rush of endorphins to calm the slip into lasting darkness. Betty’s breath still lingers in his lungs, giving him that last little rush while he watches her leave with a single glance thrown back his way.

He’s no longer drowning – he has drowned.


End file.
